Baby fashion is Just self-indulgence for grown-ups…

Baby clothes are a terrifying, yet intriguing, world of possibilities for someone like me.

At worst, I can say I don’t understand fashion. At best, I can say I’m able to operate 70-75% of belts, no problem. But I was never prepared for the complexity of clothing for little ones, even newborns. The amount of clothes we own that look as though two 14-year-olds were given a load of plain t-shirts, some highlighter pens and a crate of Red Bull and told to go wild is immense. And in no way do I mean that as a criticism. If you’d have said to me 5 years ago that I’d be dressing my son in a t-shirt with a picture of a zombie astronaut ramping a digger out of the mouth of an exploding pirate dinosaur, I’d have said you were a crazy liar. And yet, here we are. Incidentally, I’ve now copyrighted that design.

If you’d have said to me 5 years ago that I’d be dressing my son in a t-shirt with a picture of a zombie astronaut ramping a digger out of the mouth of an exploding pirate dinosaur, I’d have said you were a crazy liar. And yet, here we are. Incidentally, I’ve now copyrighted that design.

I suppose a large part of my fascination comes from the fact that my own childhood clothes were nothing like they are now. Photos of me from my crayon-munching days depict me in a variety of colourful jumpsuits like I’m starring in some weird, reverse Logan’s Run. And I don’t want to be one of those, ‘it wasn’t like that in my day’ bores, but dammit, if we’d wanted a t-shirt with a wolf on it, we’d have to skin a real-life wolf.

“I simply must dash, I’m late for my evening milky…”

I guess clothes designers need to be on the ball in an ever-changing marketplace, which is becoming increasingly harder to achieve in this social media-related world of ours. Because really, it’s not for the little ones at all, it’s a harmless bit of self-indulgence for the grown-ups. Your kid’s not going to notice they’re wearing a Batman onesie with added cape any more than Donald Trump realises the colour of his face and hair clash, but damn, is it cute!

And with attention spans nationwide plummeting due to the fact we can watch any TV show at any time on any device for any length of time, kid’s clothes have to keep your focus on them or you may become hopelessly distracted watching Game of Thrones and let your newborn toddler face first into a house fire.

Of course, by the time our kids have reached our age, I daresay they’ll be dressing their munchkins in laser beams and whatnot, but until then, long may the imagination of Red Bull-guzzling teens be allowed to run free!

Spearheaded by Al Ferguson, The Dad Network combines a personal blog with an ever-growing community of dads. Created as a personal outlet for Al Ferguson following a devastating miscarriage on his wedding day, The Dad Network has gone on to provide support to thousands of dads across the world.